


Bite, and Bite Again

by galimau



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-12 16:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19577035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galimau/pseuds/galimau
Summary: Communication is hard, ten years after tragedy. Tom grew up, and Alex got older. The trouble is in the difference between those things.





	Bite, and Bite Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is rough, but I wanted it out of my brain before it grew another few thousand words.
> 
> Not necessarily the future I'm sold on for Alex, but after reading some of Secret Weapon, it was one that seemed likely enough. There's more story here, beyond what Tom can see - I might even write some of it one day.
> 
> Title taken from "Angel of Extinction" by Don McKay: "Call it ghost. Call it aftermath. Call it remorse for its ability to bite, and bite again."

Tom had his own collection of friends now, something he’d never really achieved in school. Fellow teachers who came over for beers and bitching about the whims of administration and comparing notes on some of the more notable personalities in their classes. He had his rag-tag football team that played Sundays, and went to the pub afterward to load up on burgers and chips. A few girls, here and there when their schedules and the planets aligned. Guys, more rarely but with the same amount of shitty luck. 

Easy adult friendships all of them, where they enjoyed each other’s company and didn’t care about where you came from or what your damage was. “Divorced parents” and a shrug was enough explanation for why Tom didn’t travel for the holidays and their polite sympathy was mild and genuine enough not to grate on his nerves.

Sure, it was sometimes a little lonely, but Tom knew just as little about their own personal lives. He kept busy, and knew his friends cared about him even if they didn’t care about where he came from. 

He sometimes thought that maybe people weren’t meant to have more than one great abiding friendship, and that spot was filled a long time ago for Tom, in an after-school tussle that began with him sprawled on the ground and ended with a friendship that would last the rest of his life. Maybe his choice of best friend didn’t display his best common sense, but Alex was the only person who didn’t need polite explanations of the family arguments that still made him nervous to keep a girlfriend or boyfriend past a year, the only one who didn’t make jokes about how unlikely it was for Tom to take up teaching after his poor history with academics.

They didn’t see each other much anymore, but Alex was one of the only people Tom had ever met, as a child or an adult, who was willing to accept the importance of things that couldn’t be put into words.

Alex had asked, once, when he was crashing on Tom’s couch between flights from ‘who-knew-where’ to ‘information-redacted’ why Tom was teaching history when all he’d done as a kid was bitch about being stuck in class.

Tom thought about that night a lot, when he was slogging his way through papers and typing up redundant lesson plans. It was one of the few times he’d lied to Alex, and one of the even fewer that he thought he might have gotten away with it.

He’d told Alex that teaching was his way of trying to make a difference, that he remembered being sixteen and trying to decide on his future while his life was coming apart at home, how his teachers had been split between indifferent and concerned, and how much the few adults that tried to help meant to him. About his history professor in the first year of Uni explaining that history wasn’t about ‘what’ it was all about ‘why’. At that point Tom had desperately needed questions that he could answer after he left home and like Jerry, never looked back. That kids were brats most of the time, but they deserved someone who cared even if most of the time Tom’s hands were tied.

Alex had listened to it all, stared at Tom for a long time and then a huge smile cracked over his face. Even as it was happening, Tom knew it was a rare moment. He’d forgotten what Alex’s wide-open smiles looked like, even at twenty two. So standing in his boxers, spoon in the Nutella and muzzy from a night of drinks, Tom had watched his best friend’s face and pretended that his memory was a scanner and that all the small details – the premature lines by his eyes, the crookedness of his smile, the slight yellow tint on his eye teeth from too much coffee – couldn’t fade away.

All of that was all true, too. But if Tom had picked anything up from Alex, it was how important what someone didn’t say could be.

And Tom hadn’t said this:

That he remembered watching his best friend pass through school years with absences that grew longer each time. How no one seemed to care when Alex went from frantic to make up the work to apathetic about falling behind, that even in the classes where he aced the exams he barely scraped a passable grade because nothing was ever turned in. That while the kids speculated over whether or not Alex had finally dropped out, or maybe just had secret cancer and that was why he was so sick, the teachers wrote it off first as tragedy and then as laziness.

He’d always passed. At sixteen, Tom thought it was because Alex had the luck to pull off good enough grades to move ahead, or maybe there were strings being pulled behind the scenes by the same shadowy figures that controlled the rest of his friend’s life. It appealed to his sense of indignation that there were malevolent forces to blame for everything going wrong, and the stories Alex shared about his missions backed that up, too. 

At twenty four as a teacher himself, Tom thought it was far more likely that apathy and exhaustion were to blame. Tiny, petty problems that made it the easiest thing in the world for Alex to slip through the cracks as the subject of derision but no resistance. Everyone just wanted Alex to be someone else’s problem and shuffled him along to make their lives simpler. The tuition checks kept coming, so he stayed enrolled and no one lifted a finger more than they had to, until half way through their final year Alex turned in withdrawal forms and avoided talking to anyone when he slipped out the front doors.

More than anything, Tom didn’t say that he remembered a quiet goodbye outside his house, and years of silence that had convinced him his best friend was dead. How that history course his first year of Uni was titled ‘Twentieth Century History’ and that he would have dropped it when he saw how much required reading there was, except that they were focusing on the Cold War and the emergence of intelligence agencies as influential world powers. Tom had had a lot more questions that needed answering than just what he was supposed to be doing in life, and had jumped at the chance to ask them.

He hadn’t gotten any answers, but he’d managed to trip backwards into a major and then a career, so he couldn’t be too upset.

Years later, when things settled down again and Tom had just started to get the hang of planning for his future, everything was shaken up all over again. Somehow it felt inevitable that it was all because of Alex.

Alex reappeared in his life in the most infuriating way possible, as should have only been expected: an anonymous member of the party at a classmate’s flat third year, where he offered a plastered Tom a smoke, then dragged him to his own shitty place fifteen minutes away to sober up. 

Apparently they’d had their emotional reunion while Tom was out of it, and he only remembered vague impressions from the conversation. It was as likely as anything else, but it didn’t stop Tom from feeling faintly robbed of getting answers. One day Alex was gone, probably dead for some stupidly noble reason that no one would ever know. And the next, he was back in Tom’s life, slinking in at the edges like a feral cat, afraid to get too close. 

It was two years later now, and Tom had built up a reasonable impression of a functional adult life, broke and stressed but unquestionably his. And as he moved towards the future, he was careful to leave room for Alex to return. 

He never stayed for long, but it was enough. It was more than before, so it _had_ to be enough.

* * *

Alex was at the table when Tom stumbled in from his bedroom, looking disgustingly awake for seven in the morning. The news was on in the background - an international station, rattling off in spanish - and Alex must’ve raided his pantry and come up with the mostly-abandoned protein powder, because the remnants of a smoothie were in a glass next to his elbow. A mug was rinsed and upside down by the sink, and it looked like his counters had been wiped down too. 

No one could ever accuse Alex of being an untidy guest, but all that productivity before Tom changed out of his sweats was just _wrong_. 

Without looking up from his notepad, Alex nodded at the coffee pot. “Should still be hot. You look like you need it.”

Tom skipped the mugs and pulled out his thermos, filled it all the way up. He normally went with tea at home, but Alex had infected him with a taste for the highly-caffeinated sludge he seemed to live off of. 

“How would you know? You aren’t even looking at me,” he jabbed, only mostly joking. 

“Window.”

Tom’s peered at his still-dark kitchen window where, it was true, he saw himself looking sleepy. Tom pulled a face at his reflection, reached up to fluff his bed head to obnoxious heights, just to be ridiculous. He saw the side of Alex’s mouth quirk into a smile when he caught the gesture.

Something warm squeezed his chest, just a little. 

“You know,” Tom commented, “your omniscient spy thing’s still creepy.” He’d decided a long time ago that Alex needed all the normal-person reinforcement he could get. God knew that no one else was trying any more.

Alex flipped him off. 

Tom grinned, settling down at the chair beside him and focused on the hard business of waking up. Alex shut the notebook before he could see anything, and Tom did him the courtesy of not asking. Ever since he’d come back, quieter and more serious than before, it was the small things that made friendship with Alex run smoothly. 

Tom nursed his coffee and watched Alex watching the TV, feeling a little out of the loop. If he watched news on a Saturday, it was the local stations. If he watched the news at all, it was the local stations, really. 

“Anything important going on?”

Alex glanced at him and then back to the TV, now displaying a lingering shot of a car obliterated by a train. Pieces were spread across the tracks, and what was left of the carriage looked like a soda can hit by a sledgehammer. The train was better off, but the dented front and long scrapes of bare metal under paint didn’t make a pretty picture either.

“Traffic issues.”

Tom rolled his eyes. Alex had the best sense of humor when it was aimed at other people, and the most obnoxious one ever when you were trying to get a straight answer out of him.

“Could we put on something a little more cheerful?” 

“Why, is it driving you crazy? Should I steer clear of the news?”

“ _Alex._ ”

Alex looked over, the picture of innocence, all wide eyes and bemused brows. But Tom, who was on to him and his puns, kept up the flat stare. Give Alex an inch and he’d end up on another continent.

Alex broke first, a smile peeking out from behind his contrived expression like the sun from clouds. Tom basked in it, just a little. He couldn’t help himself. It had been a long time since they’d seen each other, longer than he’d gotten used to expecting. Months inching toward half a year, and it had showed in the sharp set of Alex’s jaw when he bedded down on the couch last night. He hadn’t said much, but he never did whenever he first got in. Seeing him in a better mood this morning was a relief.

“Put on what you want, it’s all yours,” Alex flipped through a few channels before cutting it off. “I wanted to shower after my workout anyways.” He slid the remote to Tom and stood, stretching up and back in an exaggerated arc. If Alex hadn’t spent so much time breaking them when they were kids, Tom would wonder if his friend actually had bones. He moved like a big cat, all lazy motions and efficiency.

Tom scoffed. “After ‘your workout’. You _monster_ \- It’s seven on a Saturday. Go shower and get away from me.” 

Alex rolled his eyes, but Tom held firm, pointing at the door. He might be a teacher, but he was a morning person under duress only. Alex’s effortless alertness was unwelcome in his kitchen until Tom’s thermos was at least half empty. 

Alex went, snatching his notes up from the table along the way. Nothing personal, Tom was sure. Just the usual paranoia.

Tom waited until he heard the shower cut on to turn the TV back on, volume muted. He backtracked until he found the station Alex had been taking notes on, feeling a little guilty and a lot worried that Alex would step back through the door at any minute. As it turned out, he shouldn’t have bothered - it was on a commercial break by the time he realized he’d passed over the station twice, and Tom flicked the TV off entirely, irritated at his own nosiness. It smacked of hypocrisy. 

Tom had given Alex hell since they were teenagers about trusting him and _asking_ if he wanted to know something (a conversation which had to be reinforced as adults: being reminded of his own class schedule by someone who had never set foot on campus was a surreal feeling). But it wasn’t even a matter of trust - Tom _knew_ Alex didn’t tell him things, and while that was fine in theory, it left Tom feeling like he was standing in front of some conspiracy corkboard, stringing together bits of his friend’s life from absent-minded comments. It wouldn’t have stung so much if Tom didn’t know that at one point he had been Alex’s closest ally, remembered bitching about MI6 together on park benches and vindictive promises of retribution that never came true. In his more charitable moments when Tom could look at his best friend with rosy glasses, he hoped he’d been replaced: that someone new was hearing Alex’s secrets and grievances. That Alex had someone to watch his back, even if that someone wasn’t Tom. It was only when Alex slipped back into his life, crashing on his couch and stealing his mugs without shame, that Tom felt all those jagged edges between them, and found himself resenting the distance. The secrets only hurt worse for the fact that they were new.

Tom grimaced, and took another swallow of coffee. It didn’t do any good to think about. 

By the time the shower cut off, Tom had migrated back to his bedroom to get ready for the day. 

“I’ve got practice at nine with my team. Are you just going to work from my flat today?” Tom called, sorting through the pile of laundry that had crept from the basket and pooled on the floor. He’d meant to do a load this week, but time got away from him and now he had to make do with a shirt that (hopefully) wasn’t too stained. Or rancid. Tom gave a quick sniff to the armpit region of one of his favorites, and decided that it would do the job for one more day. 

“Actually, mind if I tag along with you?” Alex asked from behind him, as casual as anything.

Tom’s head jerked up too quickly and he brained himself on the doorknob of the closet. He hadn’t heard Alex come in at all.

Wincing at the new ache over his ear, Tom tugged his shirt on and turned to stare at where Alex was snooping in his bookcase, apparently ignorant of almost killing his friend through exceptional sneakiness. He was fully dressed again - even his shoes were tied neatly, shirt slightly damp and tight around his chest. Tom wasn’t sure what Alex was looking for - the only things Tom had were a fair mix of old textbooks with the bright yellow ‘used’ sticker still on the spine, new books for his job and some DVDs still hanging on to life. 

“You’ve never wanted to come along before,” Tom said, skeptical. If anything, it was usually the opposite. Alex came over to visit, they caught up or went for dinner, the next day Alex got a secretive phone call and disappeared, or retreated to his own place after Tom’s refusal to draw the curtains started making him twitchy. 

Alex straightened up, an odd expression flashing over his face before he rolled his eyes. “If you don’t want me to…” He trailed off, nudging the books into more careful alignment on the shelf while he made eyebrows at Tom suggesting his deep willingness to return to being antisocial for the foreseeable future.

Tom hurried to reassure him. “No, it’s fine,” it was actually everything Tom had been hoping for over the last years, “it’s just surprising. You’re usually pretty exhausted when you visit.” Which was a polite way of saying Alex had very limited downtime, and appeared to view ‘meeting Tom’s other friends’ as an exercise in patience and not much genuine interest. Maybe it was understandable that he never wanted to socialize, given his job. Tom kept hoping anyways. “I’ll text and let them know you’re coming,” he paused, unable to stop his voice from ticking upward like a question. Alex nodded and headed back toward the kitchen, offering space without having to be asked.

Tom grabbed his phone and stared down at it for a long minute, trying to quell a sudden sense of nerves. 

The team wasn’t competitive, just a collection of guys who liked to play and didn’t have much time on their hands to do anything more official. He’d been turned on to it through the friends-of-friends of coworkers, and eventually settled into friendships of his own. He was proud to have them, even though that was the type of thing it felt odd to admit to out loud. 

He’d been hoping to introduce Alex to them for ages. But confronted with that happening _today_ felt very sudden. The merging of two parts of Tom’s life that felt hostile to the very concept of meeting each other. It wasn’t until Alex had casually given into two years of pestering for him to be more friendly that Tom realized he’d never pictured how it might go. 

_‘Hey guys, this is Alex, the one I talk about when I get a bit tanked off cheap beer and please never let him know I do that because I’d never hear the end of it. Alex, these are my new mates, they’re much less exciting than you but I hope you’ll like them.’_

Yeah, something along those lines seemed reasonable.

Tom delayed for a minute longer; checked his notifications and stared at his work email without clicking a single one, reviewed the weather forecast without much enthusiasm. It was going to be a beautiful day.

With a lingering case of nerves in his stomach, he fired off a message to the team chat. 

_Tom: hey guys, sorry for the late notice but alex got into town last and was wondering if he could come w/me today_

Before he’d finished lacing his trainers up, his phone was buzzing.

_Jon: Alex? THE Alex?_

_Carson: Can he play?_

_Kyle: ofc he can come!_

_Jon: I was starting to think he wasn’t real, but if he wants to come it’s not a problem. He can watch during practice or join in if we just kick the ball around towards the end._

_Carson: Don’t be a dick Jon lol_

_Jon: I’m not, I was just surprised._

_Kyle: see you all soon!_

Tom waited to see if anyone else would chime in, not entirely sure if he wanted them to or not, and when his stayed quiet he fired off a quick confirmation text and went to tell Alex to get ready to head out.

* * *

By the time they made it to the park, the sun was heavy over the trees, burning off the morning chill. It promised to be a warm and unusually sticky day; perfect for a morning game. Some of his friends had arrived early and were setting up their bags near the benches, putting water bottles near the goal posts and setting out the cones. 

The rest of the team was curious about Tom’s tag-along but mostly focused on how nice the weather was and sorting out if shirts were _really_ necessary for warming up. Tom, already sweating, was firmly in the ‘no’ camp of the debate.

Alex made himself scarce as soon as the first introductions were over, finding a sunny patch of grass and sprawling out like he was content to sink into the ground. Tom glanced over a few times as they began to get ready, but put him out of his mind as the morning wore on and practice kicked up a notch.

It felt good to stretch his legs and run the field after a week of short jogs and being trapped inside with work. Football was one of the only things that had kept him sane in school, and he’d been worried that it would be left as a fond memory of his past once he had to become an adult. The team was a godsend, and he looked forward to practice every week.

A good hour and a half came and went and Tom didn’t think about Alex again until Reese, one of the guys he wasn’t too close to but one of the de facto leaders, called an early stop to formal practice. 

Tom flopped to the ground beside Alex, panting. 

“A couple people are heading home - you want to join in for the last leg?”

Alex withdrew his arm from where it had been shading his eyes to peer at Tom and the field. 

“Are you sure?”

Tom didn’t pay much attention to the odd note in Alex’s voice, too busy trying to mop his forehead clear of sweat. That was the downside to the sunny day after so much rain - it felt like they were all playing through a bowl of soup. 

“Yeah, of course. Jon - that one,” he amended, pointing him out, “mentioned you could earlier.”

Alex squinted at Jon, who, Tom had to admit, wasn’t the friendliest looking person ever. ‘Intense’ was usually the word used to describe him.

“Yeah, I’ll join in,” Alex said, only a little hesitantly. 

Tom beamed at him, abandoning his attempt to neaten up, and sprang to his feet. He held out a hand to Alex, and didn’t let up until his friend grabbed on and let himself be hoisted to his feet. 

“Do you need to warm up?” Tom asked, thinking of the heat and Alex’s clothes - technically fine but not exactly meant for athletics. Tom had offered some of his own gear back in the apartment, citing that his own clothing was easy to move in and that he wasn’t planning on playing anyways. 

“I think I’ll be fine. I’ll go easy, it’s been a while.” 

Tom wanted to make a smart comment about no rec league for spies, maybe something about stress relief, but they were too close to the rest of the team by now. And even though Alex was being almost strangely accommodating, there were some things Tom didn’t want to press his luck on. 

Alex still seemed to sense the joke, because he cracked a smile in Tom’s direction before heading off down the field to check in with the rest of the team. 

* * *

After the informal ‘game’ died down when everyone realized no one was keeping score and the sun was starting to heat up to scorching temperatures, people started to peel off from the group. Tom volunteered to pick up, and Alex agreed to help him. 

Jon met them halfway, bearing a full bottle of water and a purposeful walk. 

Tom smelled trouble.

Jon splashed some water on his face, handed the bottle to Tom in an amazingly passive aggressive avoidance of Alex entirely. Tom would have protested if he hadn’t been so thirsty, so he settled for making ‘what the fuck’ eyebrows at Jon. 

“Tom’s told us a bit - you’re old friends? He’s been saying he means to bring you around for a while. I was surprised to see you show up today.”

Tom winced, already anticipating catching hell for that later. Alex just smiled wide and held out his hand.

“Good game - and yeah, for ages. He hasn’t been able to get rid of me, I’m afraid.” 

Jon pumped his hand in the firm one-two shake that Tom had seen him use on guys who got too friendly with Sarah at the pub. Polite, but more firm than friendly. Stared Alex hard in the face too, to Alex’s apparent bafflement. Tom was regretting a few of those tipsy ‘wish he’d respond to my texts’ complaints, because he was pretty sure Jon had a very wrong impression of why Tom had been so upset by Alex’s disappearing act. 

Alex retracted his hand smoothly and didn’t let on if he’d noticed any aggression. “You said your name was Jon?”

Jon nodded and folded his arms, face reserved. Tom tried to stare him down, or to beam ‘please stop defending my honor’ into Jon’s skull but it wasn’t working. Turns out that friends who cared about you could be _so much_ worse than the ones who always forgot your birthday. 

“So why haven’t we seen you round before? You play well enough.”

“Work. I travel a lot, so I’m out of the country most weeks. Tend to crash when I get home, so I miss most of this stuff,” Alex gestured broadly at the goals, the slightly patchy turf and the rest of the team picking up cones and discarded shirts. “Loads of fun though. Maybe I should let Tom drag me out more, make me get a life,” he added with a smile. It was a shy but warm grin, inviting everyone to laugh along at his slight embarrassment, coming from the person Tom couldn’t remember being shy ever in his life. 

He boggled at Alex.

“I really appreciate you letting me join in on short notice. It was great to have the chance to play, even just a bit.” 

Jon nodded again, plainly reluctant to let it go but unwilling to actually be an ass to a stranger who was smiling in his face with golden retriever affability. Alex made it easy for people to like him, which sometimes baffled Tom, who loved Alex with a sort of inevitable certainty but could admit he was sometimes hard to like. It was a distinction that had only emerged in recent years, and wasn’t something Tom wanted to think about. 

The rest of the group was starting to gather around, curious again about Alex and the obviously awkward conversation going on with Jon. It was time for them to leave. Alex wasn’t someone who appreciated being crowded.

Tom tapped Alex’s elbow, blurted loud enough for everyone to hear: “We better be heading back to my flat, I guess. Good game, see you guys next week, thanks for adding Alex in,” and swung the duffle over his shoulder. The sentence felt like a jumble of sounds rather than any form of actual communication even as the words left his mouth, but oh well. Tom never claimed to be good under pressure.

He felt Alex cut his eyes at him, but Tom was ignoring Alex until they were back in private and his best friend reemerged. Whoever this was was giving Tom the creeps.

Not willing to give Alex the chance to balk at the change in plans, Tom set off down the field in a demented march, bag banging hard against his hips as he tried to hurry home. Alex, true to form since they had left the flat earlier, jogged backwards a few steps to wave at the team as he caught up to Tom. 

“Why the rush?”

“You’re being weird,” Tom hissed.

Alex didn’t break pace. “I’m just being friendly. And they don’t think it’s weird.” 

“They don’t know you.”

“Do they have to?”

Tom didn’t have a good answer for that, and sped up his walk. 

“Wait - Tom!” Kyle. The guy on the team who always remembered people’s schedules and favorite foods, offered them a lift if their car was in the shop or they’d had one too many that night. He was the type of person that made you feel a little worse about yourself just by being around them, and you couldn’t even resent them for it. He was exactly who Tom didn’t want to talk to right now. If he was rude to Kyle, Tom would feel about as low as dirt for the next week. 

“Glad I caught you guys,” Kyle paused to smile at Alex, lingering a few feet away, “don’t feel like we’re running you off. There’s plenty of room at lunch if Alex wants to come.”

“Thanks, Kyle but-”

“I wanted to change into a fresh shirt first. We’ll meet you there in a few, if that works,” Alex cut in. 

Tom stared at Alex, feeling like he’d tripped over his own feet despite standing still. Maybe Alex ran into mind control chips on his latest mission or something. Tom heard practically nothing about mission details - not since they were at Brookland - but it seemed plausible. The first few times that Alex came around, all overtures to integrate with the rest of Tom’s life had been met with refusals ranging from rueful to downright chilly. Even if Alex had broken that trend this morning, Tom knew his friend well enough to know that a crowded, noisy restaurant wasn’t his idea of a relaxing time. 

Kyle, much less versed in Alex-reading and with no idea of the wider context, beamed. 

“Great! Let us know when you’re on the way - we’ll ask for extra seats.”

“Thanks a lot! Just text Tom when you’re seated,” Alex chirped.

Tom kept staring.

* * *

Every attempt Tom made to ask if Alex was absolutely sure about going to the pub, including one sneaky hand to the forehead fever-check (tolerated with limited patience) was dismissed out of hand.

“Besides,” Alex pointed out, “you’ve been trying to get me to socialize more for ages.” 

Tom sputtered and tried to figure out how to argue with that since he had, in fact, been doing just that. In the end he failed to come up with a good explanation for why he was so put off by Alex’s sudden urge to mingle with his friends, and watched with a vague sort of alarm as Alex changed clothes, splashed some water on his face, and strolled out the door. And Tom meant _strolled_ ; thumb hooking through a belt loop, phone in the back pocket of his jeans rather than glued to his hand, all loose limbs and effortless confidence.

Tom almost wanted prop a pair of sunglasses on top of his head to complete the look.

By the time they were got close to the restaurant Tom was more and more sure that either mind control or body snatchers were responsible for this shift in behavior. 

“We can leave any time you want, you know,” Tom reminded him again. Compared to Alex, Tom felt downright shabby. It wasn’t even the clothing, because Alex’s had come out of a compact duffel that left wrinkles in his shirt, and were strictly boring in design. Tom was fighting a losing battle against his laundry, sure, but one of last week’s work shirts meant that he cleaned up nice enough. No, the nagging feeling of inadequacy came from the way Alex walked down the sidewalk and never had to move out of anyone’s way. Moving through the crowds rather than with them.

“I know. But we were going to have to eat anyways, and it’ll be nice to get to know your friends a little better. We didn’t talk much during practice.” 

Tom swerved around a woman standing next to an oversized pram, and lunged forward two steps to catch up to Alex. Before his friend could snake away again Tom grabbed him by the elbow and held on. 

“What’s going on with you today?”

Alex tensed under Tom’s grip but didn’t pull away. He didn’t slacken off his pace at all, either, which left Tom doing a half-trot to keep up with him. 

“I’m fine.”

“That’s good to know, but not what I asked.” 

Alex came to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk, and pivoted on his heel to stare him in the face. Tom lurched into the halt and refused to give an inch. Not even the few that Alex naturally had on him, that made Tom tilt his head back to look him square in the eye. 

“I’m fine, Tom. I wanted to get out of your flat for the morning, and your friends seem like a good time. If you didn’t want me to come, you could have told me and I’d have stayed back.”

“Would you? You’ve been weird about this whole thing.” 

Alex was staring at him, hair lit into golden halo around his head and brown eyes very dark in the stark light of noon. There was something horribly intent about his expression and for a minute Tom thought he wouldn’t answer, but then the strange feeling faded.

“Yeah, of course I would. If you asked.” He turned away and started down the street again. “C’mon - the pub’s on the next corner.”

Tom knew. It was where he went most weeks. He had no idea why Alex would know that, though.

* * *

The pub was noisy, the seats were sticky, the melted cheese on Tom’s burger carried the shine of plastic and apparently even the heartfelt pleas of his friends hadn’t budged the waitress on extra seating arrangements for Saturday lunch. In other words, it was weirdly perfect, and felt like an oasis of normality. 

Tom had been worried that it would be strange to have Alex there, especially with the mood he’d been in today, but no one else seemed to feel like anything was off. Alex faded into the buzzing atmosphere of the crowd, laughing and joking around with Tom’s friends like he’d known them for weeks rather than hours. 

Caught up in the easy pattern of unwinding after a long week, it was easy to let the shy hope grow that against all odds Alex had been telling the truth earlier, and that everything really was fine. That after years, he enjoyed meeting Tom’s friends for real and was enjoying himself.

It sure _looked_ like he was having fun.

He’d bounced between conversations around the table, saying a whole lot of precisely nothing until Jon cornered him about his personal life.

“Are you seeing anyone?” Jon asked, eyeing the press of Alex against Tom’s side thoughtfully. That they were crowded into a booth was no good excuse. As the only married guy on the team, he’d declared himself the unofficial wingman of the group. Despite his earlier hostility at the field, Alex’s easy charm had done a lot to win him over. Tom, for his part, was busy feeling mortified. 

Alex took another swig of beer and answered the loaded question. 

“Yes. I mean, not really, but kind of,” he said with all the confidence in the world, and apparently no consideration for the chaos he was about to unleash. Tom’s friends were nosy and social to a fault, which before today had seemed like endearing traits that made them fun to hang out with, but Alex playing games was about to give Tom an aneurysm. 

Jon’s brows shot up. “You know how to cover your bases, don’t you?” 

Alex chuckled, ran a hand over the bristle of hair on the back of his neck. Shorter from the last time Tom had seen him, and he was still adjusting to the change. Combined with the premature crows feet etched by his eyes, it made Alex look old.

“Sorry about that. I meant to say that there’s someone I’m seeing, but it’s pretty casual,” Alex said, and took another pull of beer, picking at the label when he set it down again.

Tom watched it lift up from the bottle, curled by condensation and Alex’s closely trimmed thumbnail. He reminded himself that he wasn’t interested in the conversation, because anything Alex said to strangers was a filthy lie, but the taboo topic of Alex’s personal life always drew Tom in. No matter how many filters of the truth it went through. 

Jon frowned. “Does she know it’s casual?”

In a sane world, a conversation about his love life would have Alex ducking for cover. The last time Tom broached the subject, Alex decided to wax poetic about his deep and committed relationship to his paperwork. 

“I’m pretty sure he does, actually. We met through work and he keeps a pretty busy schedule himself, so expectations are low,” Alex said mildly. 

Jon shot Tom an encouraging look. Tom diligently ignored him and pretended that Alex’s ‘it’s casual’ hadn’t thrown him for a loop. Which it hadn’t, because Alex was lying. Or at the very least, he was probably lying and had done this in public to fuck with Tom because Alex had a warped sense of humor and there was absolutely no reason that Tom should be as stuck on this as he was. And honestly, if Jon kept raising his eyebrows and flicking his eyes at Alex, Tom was going to very gently explain that while Alex was his best friend and yes, unfairly attractive and charming, he was also the worst romantic prospect that Tom had ever met. And Tom had once had a fling with a coworker’s sister. 

“Well that’s too bad. I know Tom’s in a bit of a dry spell himself.”

“ _Hey,_ ” Tom said, fake-offended. There was no need to drag his good name through the mud.

Alex laughed. 

“Isn’t he always, though? Seems like you must be the only one with a good dating life.”

There was no way that Jon was going to pass up an opportunity like that. He raised his left hand, flashing the gold band on his finger. “The best, actually. I’ve been out of the dating scene for a while, myself. Means I get to play matchmaker instead.” 

“Sounds nice,” Alex replied, draining his beer. His tone didn’t invite any further commentary. Jon blinked, looking half-startled by the brusque turn of the conversation, and cast around for a safer topic.

“So what exactly do you do for work?”

If the question surprised Alex, if didn’t show. Instead, set his beer down and launched into an explanation about international banking regulations and the impact on national credit with the kind of wholehearted enthusiasm that promised a long and tedious conversation for anyone unlucky enough to get caught in it. By the time that Alex grabbed a chip from the basket and broken it up to demonstrate monetary funding routes for developing nations, everyone near him had a glazed look in their eyes, retreating back to their own, less dull conversations.  
Only Kyle was grimly hanging on, determined to be welcoming to the new person in their midst. Tom almost wanted to tell him not to bother - Alex didn’t care about leapfrogging development or whatever he was talking about now. But Kyle was trying so hard, and Alex looked so very sincere, that it seemed the better option to let them have their fun. 

Tom turned to his other side, picked up the thread of a conversation about the recent construction at the primary school Carson worked at that was making life more unbearable than usual to try and keep a class under control, and chipped in his own two cents. It wasn’t his work, but it was always easy to complain about and Tom threw himself into the rhythm of complaining about his work with enthusiasm. Certain things were holy to Saturdays, and recovering from the prior week was one of them.

With his friends around him and Alex playing nice by his side, it was easier than it should have been to forget why he’d been tense earlier. By the time that he got nagged into getting the next round of beers, Tom was having a good time.

Once he got up to place the group’s order, that all changed.

It happened completely by accident. It wasn’t a game day, so most of the TVs above the bar were tuned to various reruns, no one except the lonely few perched on solitary bar stools paying much attention. One screen in the corner was tuned to the news, even more ignored than the rest. If hadn’t had to linger at the far end of the bar to grab the beers and avoid the Saturday crush, Tom would never have bothered with more than a cursory glance. 

Even during the week, the BBC broadcast wasn’t something he spent a lot of time paying attention to, and any other day would have dismissed it as part of the background ambiance of the pub. But flashed up on the screen was the same story that Alex had been watching earlier that morning. 

The destroyed car, front end collapsed and twisted on itself until the tires were forced through the remains of the windshield. The train, largely impervious but off-kilter on the tracks.

Tom’s paused. It could have been coincidence, and if it had been any other day, just a little less weird, then he’d have put it out of his mind. But in a noisy bar, the captions were kept on. Off-time and fragmented, sure, but phrases made it through. Words like ‘former diplomat’ and ‘retirement’ and ‘tragic accident’. 

A horrible suspicion curdled in Tom’s gut, sour and heavy. 

When the drinks arrived, he took them back to the table and held his silence. He didn’t think Alex was able to see the TV with the news on from his chair, so Tom might have the time to sort his thoughts out before Alex could disarm him with a joke or an easy explanation.

There was no doubt that there was an excuse waiting, one so reasonable that it would make Tom feel silly for his paranoid suspicions. His own brain was spinning them out even as he settled back down at the table. Anyone dying that dramatically was worth some amount of news coverage, especially if they’d been in politics. 

It didn’t have to mean anything. But Tom was sure that it did.

* * *

Tom stalked into the kitchen ready for a fight. Alex had ignored him on the way back from lunch, texting someone and staying quiet from his pace a half-step behind Tom. It wasn’t surprising, Alex had always been sensitive to the mood of the people around him, and Tom knew that he was seething and a breath away from panicking, the worry and anger feeding into each other until his shoulders were tight. That didn’t help anything - Tom hated feeling upset and resented that it had come to this in the first place.

The cold shoulder on the way back to his flat hadn’t helped anything. Tom pulled the curtain closed over the window, not in the mood to see the sunny weather that he’d been so glad for earlier that morning. The wispy clouds clear blue skies added insult to injury when he was nursing a bad mood. 

“I have a question and if you lie, I will never let you back into my flat,” Tom said, meaning every word.

Alex nodded, looking wary. 

“What were you doing for MI6?”

“Oh.”

“Alex. I need to know. I never ask you questions but you’ve been,” _a trainwreck,_ “-weird all day and it’s freaking me out.” His voice didn’t sound like it usually did. Thicker and a bit strangled, like he was talking around something caught in his throat. 

“It was a wet job,” Alex said it like an admission even though it explained precisely nothing.

The first thing Tom thought of was Alex in scuba gear, or caught in the middle of rainy season in some lush rainforest. But none of that matched the resigned exhaustion in his friend’s voice, or how tight and straight his back was. Not slouched, not for as long as Tom could remember. Alex always had good posture, even as a kid. Ready to move.

Alex stared steadily at him, and Tom stared back, trying to get his brain back online, trying to square his earlier suspicions with what sounded like a nonsense phrase.

And then, without any fanfare, it clicked. Alex sounded like he was confessing because that’s what he was doing. 

Somehow Tom had expected more of a fight to get it out of him.

Tom’s mouth went dry, caught between defaulting to an apology for forcing the point, and trying not to say that he’d kinda assumed Alex had killed people before now but had never thought that it would be confirmed on a Saturday afternoon.

Well. Killed people on purpose, and not in the self-defense type of way. It was a horrible thing to think about a friend, but Tom had spent too many nights staring at the ceiling pondering horrible things. He had done it most of his life, trying to shore himself up for tragedies big and small: what were the worst marks he could get and still pass. What if neither parent wanted custody when they split. What if Jerry never came home again. What if he didn’t graduate, or his loans never came through. Tom got older and the worries aged with him, pondering the likelihood future breakups and getting fired. Running bad odds so that he had something to cling to.

Alex’s work featured in his ‘worst case’ scenarios for a long time.

Somehow, none of it prepared him for this conversation.

He’d been gearing himself up for a fight since he saw the news in the pub earlier, and now with Alex standing patiently in his kitchen Tom didn’t know where to go next. He’d sort of assumed that getting Alex to admit that he’d killed someone would be the last part of the argument, not the first. Instead of righteous anger, Tom was just shaky with inappropriate adrenaline and feeling like he needed to try and fix this somehow.

If anyone could fix killing someone. 

Words seeming more useless by the second, Tom turned away from Alex to collect his thoughts. He went to grab a cup, for something to do with his hands more than anything, and discovered that he’d shoved his hands into his pockets, balled into tight fists. There was probably no way to make this look casual or like he knew what he was doing, so he just kept them there. Breathed in and out for a minute. 

The picture of the ruined car cycled through his mind again, and Tom had about a dozen questions he wanted to ask and even more that he never wanted to admit to having at all. 

When he turned back, Alex had retreated to the doorway on silent feet.

Tom stared at his friend, and tried very hard to find something to say that wasn’t awful.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably true,” Alex offered after a minute. “I don’t know if this makes it better or worse, but this time it was just…” A shrug started in his shoulders and traveled the length of his body. Alex looked faintly puzzled by his own difficulty in finding words. “It was complicated. It got messy.”

If that wasn’t Alex-speak for ‘completely horrible’ Tom didn’t know what was.

“I wasn’t going to tell you. I never have before, I knew it’d upset you.” 

Tom didn’t react, kept his breathing steady while the concept of a ‘before’ settled heavy under his ribs. His gut had been right, then. Knowing that didn’t make Tom feel any better.

Alex must have realized what he’d implied, because he grimaced and ran his hand over his head. He’d done that earlier, and Tom wondered again exactly how new the short, tight cut was. It could have meant anything or nothing. Tom had no way of knowing. 

Alex continued talking, seemingly committed to his burst of honesty now. “It’s not - I don’t want help, it’s not that kind of problem. It’s not really a problem at all. I just figured something out that I should have a while ago,” he tacked on with a shrug. As if that explained anything.

One corner of Alex’s mouth fish-hooked higher than the other, and his hands hung loose and open by his sides. 

It was that glib dismissal that finally drew the words from where they’d been locked under Tom’s tongue. He felt suddenly and abruptly furious, as if the welled pressure in his head had just broken.

“You just figured out that you don’t like your job? You’ve _never_ liked the work. You didn’t like it when we were kids and you’ve been coming ‘round for years now and you don’t seem much happier,” he bit out. “But you don’t want to talk about it, or you can’t talk about it - which is bullshit, by the way, I signed the OSA as a kid and then again when you came back so it’s not like I’m not keeping secrets already - and you haven’t talked about quitting since Brookland,” head throbbing, Tom cut himself off. Pressed his lips together and tried to swallow back the anger, and behind that, the wretched wave of grief that threatened every time he thought too hard about Alex’s situation. It never did any good. Like laying in his bedroom and listening to doors slam and dishes rattle, with this too Tom was an observer to some greater tragedy, accounting for the damage from the sidelines. He was fucking done with it.

“Stop standing there and saying that you don’t like your job, and do something about it!” He snapped the words with grim finality, feeling like he’d just plunged them off the cliff they’d been politely observing for the past few years. Tom half-expected Alex to yell back. He’d never been one to back down from a fight.

But Alex didn’t move, didn’t react at all to Tom’s rant. Only waited for him to finish, looking politely curious about what Tom was getting at. It felt very obvious that Alex wanted the conversation done with yesterday. It felt like Tom had missed a beat somewhere, like what he was talking about was two shades off from what Alex had been saying. Alex looked distinctly unhappy to be hearing this - Tom could tell by how his expression didn’t look like much of anything at all.

Well, tough shit. Tom wasn’t having fun either. 

If Alex wasn’t going to argue, then Tom would say his piece. It might even make a difference this time. “If you can’t do anything about it, just tell me what’s going on and I can help.” Tom seized on the thought with determination. If Alex would finally, _finally_ ask for a way out, then Tom would do whatever it took to get him there. He had a couch, he had a steady job. He could let Alex stay at his place if he needed to get his feet under him. Shit, he was still in contact with Jack, and God knew how much she wanted to see Alex out from under the shadowy monolith of The Bank. They’d figure something out. At school they were always talking about job training and there were people who got second degrees and changed careers all the time. There had to be a way for Alex, charming and whip-smart and too old for twenty four, to find a place in the world that didn’t make him talk about killing someone with the same baffled resignment people used to describe locking their keys in the car. 

“I’m good at it. And someone has to do the job.”

“You could be good at a lot of things.”

“Not like this. It’s… I… It’s been what, ten years now? If I was going to leave, I would have done it by now.” Alex gave a stillborn laugh, more a sigh than any genuine amusement. “Shit, Tom. I did leave, and it didn’t stick. Sometimes you don’t get to choose what you’re good at.”

Tom’s throat swelled shut. He hadn’t known Alex tried leaving. 

They stood there for a long time, sizing each other up. Tom next to the window where the afternoon sun was still trying to shove through the curtains and Alex trying to fade back through the doorway.

“You’re my best mate, you know? Better than anyone else would have been, after everything I put you through,” Alex said.

Tom thought about protesting, but the memory of thinking Alex was dead in an anonymous ditch for years was still too sharp. He’d forgiven Alex the moment he reappeared, too glad for the cut-rate miracle to nurse any grudges, but Tom hadn’t ever really gotten over it. Not completely. He didn’t know anyone who could. 

“Yeah, I know,” he said instead. 

Alex tilted his head back against the doorframe and watched him with a wry expression. “You’re really my only friend. You and Jack, and Jack’s in the States trying to change the world. I see you more than her, and even I know that’s not a good sign.” Something shuttered behind Alex’s face, or maybe tightened. Whatever it was, Alex looked just a little bit harsher and a little bit further away than before. 

Tom’s hands twitched at the expression, and he flexed them in his pockets. 

“So maybe it’s selfish, but I don’t tell you a lot. Most of it you can’t know, and the rest of the time I want to hear about you instead.” Tom must have looked doubtful, because Alex continued, “I _like_ hearing about you. You get embarrassed when you think you’ve been talking for too long about your classes or a bad date, it happens every time, but I promise it doesn’t bother me.” 

Tom didn’t know what to say to that. Alex wasn’t wrong, but Tom never would have guessed that Alex knew he felt off-balance during their visits. Thrilled to see his friend and know he was safe, always happy to spend time with him and laugh over dumb jokes, but unsettled. Tom always tried to make sure that his mixed feelings didn’t show. It wasn’t fair to put that on Alex too, not when he was dealing with so much else already. And no matter how he felt, getting a visit from his best friend was always worth trying to shake the weird sadness that always seemed to linger after Alex left again. 

Tom always felt weird rambling on about school supplies running short or how he wasn’t ready to settle down but he hated the awkwardness of first dates; it always felt petty compared to Alex’s griping about the bureaucratic dick-swinging at MI6 or tight-lipped generalities about where work had recently taken him.

“So what was up with the stepford impression today?” The tense confession of a bad job done well explained some of the behavior away but not most of it. Tom would have expected Alex to shut himself down and retreat from the world the way he’d done after missions at Brookland, not start making friends with everyone he met. 

Alex grimaced. 

“You’re not going to like this, just a warning. But you know we… we used to be a lot alike.”

Tom remembered. He’d always been a little in awe of Alex, who was so much like him but just that little bit better and brighter from when they were friends.

Alex continued, “I wanted to see what your life was like. You’ve told me about yourself and asked me to come to those things for so long. I’ve been-” he seemed to rethink his words halfway through, “-lived as different people on missions, but there’s always a threat there. If you fuck it up, well...” 

Tom could imagine. It made him feel slightly sick to think about, but the logic almost tracked if you took enough steps back to make the fear fade out.

Glancing at his face, Alex hurried to explain. “It wasn’t because of this job, I promise that this wasn’t some kind of stress-trauma thing because of what happened. I’ve thought about trying this before and it always seemed like too much of a bother, but this time Jones gave me extended time off after my debrief and I kinda figured ‘why not’, you know? Without worrying about being shot if I didn’t pull it off,” Alex finished with a shy smile. As if it were funny. 

Tom took a deep breath, counted up on the exhale. He hit ten and started counting again, trying to get his thoughts in order.

_(Alex, smiling at Jon, eyes wide and a little confused but happy to be meeting Tom’s friends. Sitting at a booth he hadn’t picked, pressed between laughing strangers and giving as good as he got while everyone joked around. Throwing his arm around Tom on the walk to the park that morning, pressed close against his side like it was still them against the world.)_

_(Alex, silent in the doorway, embarrassed that he’d murdered someone. That he felt bad about it this time.)_

Dull nausea rolled Tom’s stomach.

It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ Alex to play football or joke around with friends or have a beer at noon on a Saturday. But none of those things fit him, not really, and watching from the sidelines while Alex charmed and wove his way into Tom’s routine like he was unraveling a puzzle felt wrong in a way that put his teeth on edge. Put the body of Person A (Alex Rider) into the schedule of Person B (Tom Harris), watch a new person emerge. That wasn’t how that worked. That Alex thought that this was okay, that it was something he’d planned to do for a while, set something crawling under Tom’s skin. 

He tried to find something to say, even to start pleading with Alex again, and discovered that he couldn’t. The misery and the anger from earlier had drained away, and now Tom just felt incredibly tired. His eyes ached and his throat hurt, but everything he felt was locked into his body while his brain only threw out static. 

Like after a bad breakup, even though nothing had really happened. He and Alex hadn’t even argued, not really. Mostly just talked at each other, having different versions of an old conversation.

He headed to the couch and sat, pressing his head into his hands. He felt hot all over. Alex could sit down or he could leave. Tom wasn’t sure which he wanted, right now. 

More than a minute ticked past, and Alex cleared his throat before he sat down. It was a nice gesture, especially since Tom still couldn’t hear Alex move. Alex settled on the other cushion, not touching but close enough that Tom felt the couch dip with his weight. No one said anything for a long time.

Clearly someone had to be the emotional adult here, and for all that Tom preferred to ignore uncomfortable conversations - something about conflict and the divorce, he’d been told several times - no one could do silence like Alex. Tom ground his knuckles into his eyes and dragged the words out from his chest.

“Don’t do that again. I mean it. You like hearing about my life? I like being friends with you. Even the weird twitchy you who can’t talk to me half the time. But you can’t just… try out being me.” It sounded stupid when he put it like that. He kept talking anyways. “If you want to meet my friends, then fuck it, that’s great. But I want them to meet you, and I know that you have to work at some boring finance job instead of what you actually do,” which was spying with a side of murder, apparently, but Tom was done trying to process that at the moment so _whatever_ , “and I don’t want you to be-”

“Friendly?” Alex interjected.

“-someone you’re not.” 

Alex made a little humming noise instead of responding. It probably counted as diplomatic.

“Your friends wouldn’t like me.”

“Yeah, you never grew out of your godawful jokes,” Tom replied on automatic. Familiar ground in an otherwise nightmarish day.

“It’s your pun-ishment for something, I guess.”

“ _Alex._ ”

“Not the time?”

Tom laughed. It was all he could do. And if it was a little hysterical, well. He was entitled to some hysteria. Beside him, Alex unwound a little more.

“I really didn’t mean anything by it. It didn’t occur to me that you’d be upset. If anything I figured you’d like me acting normal,” Alex said with a shrug.

It wasn’t an apology, even if it sounded like one, but it sounded honest. And wasn’t that just typical. One of the smartest people Tom knew, with way more responsibility that any one person should have, and sometimes Alex only had a single brain-cell active at a time. Tom could have pressed the point, twisted the knife over the difference between acting and being, and why making that distinction made something cold open up in Tom’s chest. 

But he knew Alex’s job. And however upset Tom was, he knew Alex wasn’t stupid. If that was all he could give right now, then Tom would take it and be glad he was trying. 

“So did you have a good time being me?” Alex had seemed to like playing football again, at the very least. That was something.

Alex took the question seriously, brow crinkling up in consideration. “It was nice enough.”

“You skipped right to the good part, too. No grading papers.”

The joke was meant to be a truce, and Alex brightened when he heard it. He smiled and slid closer until he was pressed against Tom’s side. He was a warm solid weight of muscle and complicated emotional baggage, and Tom loved him. It was honestly kind of infuriating.

“You’ve got good friends. They’re really good, Tom.” 

Tom nodded. It was true, and it was a good life that he’d built over the past years. He’d come a long way from the kid who didn’t have a plan beyond getting out from under his parent’s roof. 

“And what about you - no other friends at all?” Tom pressed. There was something miserable about the idea that all Alex had was occasional visits with him and Jack, scattered across months of missions and solitude.

Alex didn’t talk for a while, but it didn’t feel as hostile as before. In the kitchen, Alex had been trying to avoid the conversation. Now he just seemed confused, frowning into the middle distance. Tom let him think, heart just a little more wounded the longer the silence stretched.

When Alex finally began to speak, his voice was smaller than Tom could ever remember it being. 

“I have people. I do,” Alex said to the living room at large, carefully avoiding looking at Tom. If the admission about his work earlier had felt shallow, this was worse because of how much it seemed to hurt him. “I had a partner for a while before he got reassigned back to the scalpers. I get on with Mrs. Jones -” 

“With _Jones_?”

Tom immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut as Alex bristled.

“We’re not friends, but I know what she wants from me and she listens when I make requests. Maybe it doesn’t always go my way but it’s better than it was before,” he snapped. 

The urge to retort that almost _anything_ would have to be better than what Alex’s life used to be grew and died on Tom’s lips, but he kept his mouth shut. If he said the wrong thing again, there was every chance that Alex would stop talking.

After a tense moment where Alex watched him out of the corner of his eye, he continued.

“And I have people from my work. Not like yours, but they’re what I need. Maybe not friends but close enough.” Alex shifted to the side, bumped Tom with his hip. “I don’t have to worry about them like I do with you. They’ll be fine, or they won’t.”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Tom protested. That was a bit rich, coming from the one person Tom worried about even more than Jerry, who jumped off cliffs as a hobby. “I’m fine. I’m _boring._ ” 

Alex didn’t look convinced, and Tom rolled his eyes mightily. 

“Okay, fine. You don’t worry about them. Still sounds lonely.”

“It’s better than having too many people. I’d be a mess if I cared about more than you and Jack. Wouldn’t get any work done at all.”

And that was back to the heart of this entire day, wasn’t it? The car shattered across the tracks and Alex quietly coming apart in his living room, smiling bright and happy and not the least bit sincere.

Tom worried the inside of his lip with his teeth and decided to try one last time. It would be worth all the headaches and awkwardness if he could just get Alex to bend a little.

“Is it worth it? The work?”

Next to him, Alex went still and Tom knew that he had lost.

“I get paid well, if that’s what you mean. Even though I _am_ about to ask for one hell of a raise.” 

“Alex-”

“Drop it, Tom.”

And begrudgingly, Tom did. Alex was already moving to get up from the couch, reaching for his phone on the table.

“It’s not even three yet, is it?” He asked instead, trying to keep the conversation alive.

Alex answered without looking up from his phone. “Nope. You managed to fit two whole crises into the early afternoon. That’s more than my boss even manages.” 

“Let’s stay in tonight. You got in so late last night that we didn’t get the chance to catch up. Order delivery or something.”

Alex turned to watch Tom carefully, a slight squint that made the lines by his eyes stand out.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” 

“Please,” Tom said quietly. He didn’t care if it was begging. He just wanted to stop Alex running out the door like he could already feel him getting ready to do. For once, he even understood why. Usually it was a quick vanishing, without even the excuse of a hard conversation. But now Tom felt much less certain that Alex would turn back up if he was allowed to run away. 

Tom wasn’t sure he could stand that happening again. 

After a hesitation lasting far too long for Tom’s peace of mind, Alex nodded.

“Delivery sounds fantastic.”

And that was that. Conversation over.

Tom settled back into the couch, a new pit opening in the bottom of his stomach. It wasn't regret, not exactly, because this had been a long time coming. Either two years or ten, depending on how he counted. And Tom wasn't naive enough to imagine that whatever damage Alex was carrying had accumulated only recently. It just made him feel like a failure of a friend that he was just now noticing. Tom had no idea how the fact of the demolished car had turned into the least distressing part of that conversation, but somewhere between Alex's admission of guilt and his last request to be left alone, Tom had realized there were worse monsters waiting in the wings that he had no clue about. 

This was a temporary truce, even he knew that much. What was wrong with Alex wasn’t something that he could fix in one stilted afternoon, especially if Alex wouldn’t even let him try. 

But Alex was his best friend, no matter what happened or what he did. 

If there was anything that Tom had to believe in to let him sit quietly next to him, it was that. 

Even if it scared him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think!


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